The Silver Branch [book II] (12 page)

He reined in at sight of them, and the ponies stood with their breath smoking into the mist.

‘All well?’ Flavius said.

‘Well enough so far, but I think that we are none too soon. There is a stirring in the fort, and the word runs already along the Wall that the Commander of Magnis and his healer are nowhere to be found. Mount now, and ride.’

It was just before dusk on the third day that they came down into the head of a widening dale, and saw before them a farm lost in the wilderness.

Until now they had kept clear of the haunts of men, but their meal-bag was empty, and since on this desperate forced march south they could not spend precious time in hunting, they must get more supplies from somewhere. It was a risk, but it had to be taken, and they turned the ponies’ heads down into the dale, Evicatos reversing his great war-spear that he had brought with him, to show that they came in peace. In the lonely vastness of the surrounding hills, the cluster of bracken-thatched huts within the ring fence seemed no larger than a palmful of brown beans, but as they drew nearer they saw that it was a big farm, as such places went, and that it was full of a great coming and going, both of men and cattle.

‘Are they expecting an attack, that they drive all the cattle in among the steading huts?’ Flavius said.

Evicatos shook his head. ‘
Na na
, it is the feast of Samhain, when they bring the sheep and cattle down from the summer pasture and pen them close for the winter. I had lost count of the days. Yet it will only make our welcome the more sure.’

And so indeed it proved, for at Samhain all doors stood open, and before it was full dusk the three strangers had been accepted without question, their ponies stabled, and they themselves brought in and given places on the men’s side of the fire, among the others gathering there.

The fire burned on a raised hearth in the midst of the great houseplace, and at the four corners of the hearth four whole tree-trunks stood to uphold the crown of the bracken-thatched roof high overhead, and on every side the shadows ran away into the dark. The people gathering about the fire—he supposed that they were all one family—were roughly clad, the men for the most part in the skins of wolf and red deer, the women in rough woollen cloth, as though they were less skilled in spinning and weaving than the women of the South; but it seemed that they were prosperous in their way, and not cut off from the world, for among the pots in which the women were making ready the evening meal were some fine red Roman pottery; and the lord of the house himself, an immensely fat man clad in the skin of a wolf over his rough plaid breeks, had a necklace of yellow amber beads that shone here and there through the grey tangle of his beard. And when the woman of the house rose in her place, and brought the Guest Cup to the three strangers, it was an ox horn mounted in red Hibernian gold.

‘It is good to have a stranger within the gates at Samhain,’ said the woman, smiling.

‘It is good to be the stranger who comes within such gates as these, at the day’s end,’ Flavius said, and took the cup, and drank, and gave it back to her.

There was much food and much drink, and the party waxed more and more uproarious as the heather-beer went round, and old stories were told and old songs chanted, for winter was the time for such things, and Samhain was the start of winter. But Justin noticed that through it all, the men kept a place empty among themselves, and no man touched the beer-cup that had been set before it.

Flavius it seemed had noticed it, too, for presently he turned to the Lord of the house, and asked, ‘Are you expecting another guest tonight?’

‘Why should we be expecting another guest?’

‘Because you keep his place for him.’

The fat man glanced in the direction he had indicated. ‘
Na
, how should you know, being as I think Romans? Samhain is the feast of home-coming; we bring the cattle safe home out of the wild weather until spring comes again, and should we deny a like shelter to the ghosts of our own dead? For them also it is home-coming for the winter, and we set their beer-cup by the hearth to bid them welcome. Therefore Samhain is also the feast of the dead. That place is for a son of mine that carried his spear after the Emperor Curoi, and died down yonder at Eburacum of the Eagles, seven summers ago.’

‘Curoi!’ Flavius said swiftly, and then, ‘I beg you forgive me. I should not have asked.’

‘Nay, he was a fool that he went at all,’ said the old man grumblingly. ‘I care not if he hears me say it now, for I said it to him at the time.’ He took a long pull at the beer-pot and set it down, smacking his lips. Then he shook his head. ‘Yet it was a waste, for he was the best hunter of all my sons. And now there is another Emperor in Britain after all.’

Justin had an odd sensation, as though all the blood in his body had leapt back to his heart; and suddenly everything seemed to go both still and slow. He shot one sideways glance at Flavius, and saw the hand that had been hanging relaxed across his knee clench slowly, very slowly, into a fist, and then relax again. Nothing else moved. Then Evicatos said, ‘
Sa
, that is news indeed. Is it the man they call Allectus?’

‘Aye. Did you not know then?’

‘We have been long away from men’s tongues. How did it come about?’

‘I will tell you as it was told me by a Hibernian merchant that was here yester night. It was the Sea Wolves that struck the blow. They slipped in past the ships of the Romans that were against them, in the mist and darkness, and ran their dragon keels ashore below Curoi’s houseplace where Curoi was. They say that this Allectus gave them the signal, and was with him that night and opened the door to them; but that is a thing that matters little either way, for all men know who stands behind the Sea Wolves. They overcame his guards and slew them, and cried to Curoi to come out to them from his great chamber where he was; and he went out to them unarmed, and they cut him down on the threshold.’ He ended his tale and reached again for his beer-pot, glancing sideways under his brows at the three strangers, as though half afraid that he had said too much.

Flavius said in a curious dead-level voice, ‘Nay, we be none of us Allectus’s men … When was this thing done?’

‘Six nights since.’

‘
Six nights
? Such news travels fast, but this must have had the wings of the wind. Surely it can be no more than some wild rumour?’

‘Nay.’ It was Evicatos who answered, with quiet certainty, his eyes on the lord of the house. ‘It is no rumour. It is news that runs by the old ways that you and your people have forgotten.’

And something in his own heavy certainty made certainty for the other two also. No use, all this forced marching, Justin thought, no use pushing on. They were too late, after all. Too late. Suddenly he was seeing that lamplit room on the cliffs, just as he had seen it on a wild winter’s night nearly a year ago, with the logs burning on the hearth, and the great window looking toward Gesoriacum Light; and the terrible little Emperor who had held Britain and the seaways of Britain safe in a ruthless yet loving hand. He saw the red gleam of fire in the courtyard and heard the cries and the clash of weapons; and the voices shouting for Carausius. He saw the short, square-built figure walk out by the courtyard door, unarmed, to meet death. The drifting sea-mist gilded by the torches, and the fierce barbarian faces; men who were seamen even as the man who faced them was a seaman, and kin to him in blood. He saw the wide-lipped, contemptuous smile on the Emperor’s face, and the flash of the saex blades as they cut him down …

But it was only a half-burned birch branch falling into the red heart of the fire; and the beer-jar was coming round again, and the talk had swung away from the change of Emperors to the prospects of the winter’s hunting. A change of rulers, after all, meant little up here in the mountains. The deer were as fleet of foot and a cow carried her calf as many days, no matter who wore the Purple.

The three had no chance to speak to each other apart until far into the night, when, having been out to see that all was well with the ponies, they stood together in the thorn-closed doorway of the steading, looking away down the widening sweep of the dale toward the lopsided hunters’ moon shaking clear of the dark fells.

Flavius was the first to break the silence. ‘Six nights since. So it was already too late by a night and a day when we wrote that letter.’ He looked round at the other two, and in the moonlight his eyes were like black holes in his face. ‘But why should Allectus seek the help of the Painted People against the Emperor if he meant to murder him before their help could come? Why, why, why?’

‘Maybe he did not mean it to happen so, when he sent his emissaries North,’ Evicatos said. ‘Then maybe Curoi began to suspect, and he dared wait no longer.’

Flavius said, ‘If we could have made him believe us, back in the spring. If
only
we could have made him believe us!’ And his voice was shaking. After a few moments he steadied it, and went on, ‘Since Allectus has seized the Purple without aid of the Painted People, and will have, moreover, sundry other matters to attend to, it seems that at least for a while your people are saved, Evicatos of the Spear.’

‘For a while, yes,’ Evicatos said, smiling at the great spear on which he leaned. A little chill wind ruffled the swan’s feathers, and Justin noticed how white they shone in the moonlight. ‘Presently, in a few years, if Allectus still wears the Purple, the danger will come back; but nevertheless, for this while, my people are saved.’

‘And therefore this is your trail no longer.’

Evicatos looked at him. ‘This is my trail no longer. So I will go North again, in the morning, to my hounds that I left with Cuscrid the smith and my own hunting runs; yet taking care, I think, that men do not see me on the Wall again. And maybe I shall watch a little, and listen a little, among the heather … And you? What trail do you follow now?’

‘Southward still,’ Flavius said. ‘There is one thing for us to do now—to make our way somehow across to Gaul, and thence to the Caesar Constantius.’ He threw up his head. ‘Maximian and Diocletian had no choice but to make peace with our little Emperor, but they’ll not stomach his murderer in his place. Sooner or later they will send the Caesar Constantius to end the thing.’

Justin spoke for the first time, his eyes still on the wind-stirred swan’s feathers about the neck of Evicatos’s great war-spear. ‘It is a strange thing—Carausius began to make of us something more and—and greater than a p-province among other provinces; and now, in the bare time that it takes to kill one man, that is undone, and all that we can hope for is that the Caesar Constantius will come and take back his own.’

‘Better for Britain to take her chance with Rome than fall into ruin under Allectus’s hand,’ Flavius said.

W
INTER had come, and a snow-wind was blowing up through the bare trees of Spinaii Forest, when at last Justin and Flavius entered Calleva with the market-carts as soon as the gates were open one morning.

They had made for Calleva because in spite of having sold the ponies, in spite of having lived lean all those weary weeks on the trail South, they had not as much money left as they would certainly need to get them across to Gaul. ‘I do not want to go to the farm,’ Flavius had said some days before, when they talked the thing over. ‘Servius would raise the money somehow, but it would take time, and already most of the shipping will be beached for the winter. No, we’ll go to Aunt Honoria—with any luck she won’t have gone to Aqua Sulis yet. She’ll lend us what we need, and Servius can pay her back how and when he can. Besides, it is in my mind that once we get to Gaul it may be a long time before we get back, and so I would not go without saying farewell.’

Just inside the East Gate, by which they had entered, Flavius said, ‘This is where we turn off,’ and leaving the trundling and lowing stream of market traffic, they plunged away to the left through a fringe of shops, into the gardens of some big houses, quiet save for the little hushing wind in the winter dawn; and presently, with many garden hedges behind them, emerged close to the back quarters of a house rather smaller than the rest.

‘Round here,’ Flavius whispered. ‘Lie up behind the wood stack and spy out the land. Don’t want to run into any of the slaves and have to explain ourselves.’

They circled the dark huddle of out-buildings, and a little later were lying up in the lee of the brushwood pile, while before them, across the narrow courtyard of the slaves’ quarters, the house gradually awoke. A light showed in a window. A voice sounded scoldingly, and as the light broadened into a bar of cold daffodil behind the roof ridge a stringy little woman with her head tied up in a crimson kerchief began sweeping the dust and small refuse of the kitchen out into the yard, humming softly to herself the while.

It was full daylight when an immensely fat woman with a saffron-coloured mantle drawn forward over her grey hair appeared from the house doorway, and stood looking round her at the bleak morning. At sight of her, Flavius let out a soft breath of satisfaction. ‘Ah, the Aunt is in residence.’

‘Is that her?’ Justin whispered. Somehow she was not what he expected.

Flavius shook his head, his face alight with laughter. ‘That is Volumnia. But where Volumnia is, Aunt Honoria is also … Now if I can catch her attention.’

The enormously fat woman had waddled out into the courtyard to get a better view of the weather; and as she halted, Flavius picked up a pebble and tossed it toward her. She glanced toward the tiny sound, and as she did so, he whistled very softly, an odd, low-pitched call on two notes, at sound of which she started as though a horse-fly had stung her. Justin saw her stand a moment, staring toward their hiding-place. Then she came waddling toward them. Flavius slithered back, swift as a snake, and Justin followed him, so that they were well out of sight of the house when she came panting round the brushwood pile and found them.